Hardware Wallets: A Privacy and Security Guide to Keeping Your Keys Off the Internet

A hardware wallet promises one simple thing: your keys never touch the internet. In this episode, Aengus explains how crypto wallets really work, from private keys to seed phrases. He goes back to Prague in 2013, where Marek "Slush" Palatinus and Pavol "Stick" Rusnák started building the first Trezor on a Raspberry Pi. Then he walks through step by step how a hardware wallet generates, stores and signs. Then comes the honest part. A five-year-old entropy bug in Coldcard firmware let attackers rebuild seeds and drain well over a hundred million dollars in bitcoin from July 2026, without touching a single device. Trezor and Ledger customers have faced lab attacks, blind-signing disasters like Bybit, and repeated leaks of names and home addresses through partners. Those leaks fed phishing and a wave of violent wrench attacks. The episode closes with the EU's self-custody rules, including the AMLR coming in July 2027. Then come practical privacy and security tips: how to buy without leaving a trail, protect your address, generate your own seed, avoid blind signing and test your recovery. https://x.com/AengusWiz This episode is for educational purposes only and is not financial or legal advice. Rules on crypto and privacy tools vary by country. AI disclosure: This episode's script was researched and written with the help of AI. Facts were checked against public sources at the time of production, but crypto moves fast, so please verify anything important before acting on it.